Egypt, plagued by tomb raiders and art dealers, has lost large portions of its pharaonic heritage to Europe and the United States. The head of the country's Supreme Council of Antiquities is waging a bitter moral campaign against the West, and he is now demanding the return of six of the most beautiful masterpieces.

...The man has already brought home 31,000 smuggled objects in past years. They are primarily pieces taken in illicit excavations, which have been sold over the last 50 years, through auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's, to museums in the United States.

...The Louvre also got a taste of his fury. Hawass wanted the French museum to return five magnificent frescoes it had acquired from a seller who had obtained them illegally. When it refused, he ejected French archeologists from Egypt and terminated all collaboration with the treasure trove on the Seine.

Finally, last October, French President Nicolas Sarkozy put in a sheepish call to Mubarak, promising that everything that had been requested would be turned over. Hawass was triumphant: "It was a victory for us."

...Hawass wants the magnificent bust of the vizier Ankhaf from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. The British Museum in London is being asked to hand over the Rosetta Stone, which was used to decipher hieroglyphs. The heaviest piece, an astrological relief with a depiction of the zodiac, is in the Louvre.

He has two demands for the Germans. In addition to the bust of Nefertiti in Berlin's New Museum, Hawass is claiming a 4,500-year-old limestone statue on display in Hildesheim near Hanover. It depicts Hemiunu, the architect of the tomb of Cheops.

The last item on his list, currently in Turin, Italy, is an image of Ramses II, carved by an unknown Nile Michelangelo.